My pub branch gets quite a wide range of customers.
Apart from homegrown ones, we regularly get (alphabetically) Albanians, Brazilians, Bulgarians, Colombians, Cypriots, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Lithuanians, Polish, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Turks, plus lots of Africans and West Indians, with the occasional Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Finn, French, German, Norwegian, Slovak, and Swede thrown in.
I always ask them how to say “thank you” in their language, and use it on the next lot I come across, which invariably surprises them (especially given my Oriental looks) and pleases them no end as well.
One day last year, two men sitting at the wall looked fierce and even slightly grumpy. When I found out they were from Bulgaria and said “Благодаря ти” (“thank you” in Bulgarian) to them, their faces absolutely melted into broad smiles. For the rest of the evening, every time I walked past them, one of them would hail me heartily with “Благодаря ти!” and a big enthusiastic smile. (I now think they looked forbidding because they couldn’t speak much English, so they were a bit nervous.)
Because I don’t always remember if I’d met a group before (yes, Westerners can all look the same to us Orientals as well), I sometimes end up asking the same lot where they’re from. One group of Albanians has now taken to going straight into saying “faleminderit” (“thank you” in Albanian) to me to save me asking them where they’re from.
(London, 2018)
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